Attitudes of demographic item non-respondents in employee surveys

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate
whether the participants in an employee survey who do not answer one
or more demographic items differ systematically from those who fill
out all demographic items.

Design/methodology/approach – Logistic regression, with
affective commitment, job satisfaction, and attitude towards
leadership as predictors of responding to demographic items is used
to analyze the data of an employee survey in a German company.

Findings – Survey participants with low commitment, poor job
satisfaction, and negative attitudes towards leadership are more
likely not to provide demographic information, while highly
committed participants tend to answer all demographic items.
Non-respondents are also more concerned that their skills become
obsolete, and they feel that employees do not have enough say.

Research limitations/implications – The paper does not
distinguish among demographic item non-respondents on the basis of
how many and which items are omitted. Future research should take a
closer look at the different sensitivity of the demographic
items.

Practical implications – Managers should be aware that it is
likely that the results of an employee survey for their
organizational subunits tend to be biased and show a picture that is
too optimistic as compared to company-wide results.

Originality/value – The value of the paper lies in
demonstrating a systematic and practically important bias in
employee survey statistics that has been overlooked so far.

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